"Drill, Baby, Drill" Fails: American Oil Production Spikes Under Obama, Prices Still Soar

On Climate Progress, Joe Romm has an extremely important post about the complete and utter failure of the "Drill, baby, drill" approach to energy security, and the absurdity of current Republican attacks that blame President Obama for soaring oil prices.

In fact, under President Obama, domestic oil production has risen to the highest levels since 2003. According to the Financial Times,

analysts believe the US was the largest contributor to the increase in global oil supplies last year over 2009, and is on track to increase domestic production by 25 per cent by the second half of the decade.

Domestic oil production is soaring, but so are global prices. It should be obvious that yet more drilling can’t have any significant impact on oil prices — particularly since the U.S. Energy Information Administration has been making that precise point for years now (see EIA: Full offshore drilling will not lower gasoline prices at all in 2020 and only 3 cents in 2030!).

The only thing that can protect Americans from the inevitably increasing oil shocks of Peak Oil is an aggressive strategy to reduce the country’s oil intensity (oil/GDP), including a steady increase the fuel efficiency of our vehicles — policies that conservatives have fought for decades.

Of course this hasn't stopped certain Republicans from blaming Obama for the current oil price spikes. If you have the stomach for it, Think Progress has a collection of those ridiculous attacks.

If you prefer the wonky energy stuff—actually, even if you can just stand the wonky energy stuff—please go read the whole Climate Progress post. And be sure to tell everyone you know that domestic oil production has done nothing but consistently and sharply risen under the Obama administration. That we're producing more oil within our borders every day than all but the first year of Bush, the Younger's tenure.